All the reading that I have done over the last 15 months couldn't prepare my mind for the reality. I've been living out in isolation for 2.5 years and to go back into the city and look at house prices was a shock to my system.
We went looking at new houses yesterday because a lot of times they are offering incentives and prices that are lower than existing homes. From what we saw, it wasn't true.
We had a hard time finding anyone from one company and when we finally did, he was nice but somewhat patronizing. We told him the price range we were looking for and he said, "Oh, are you first time home owners?"
He's lucky that I just think things in my head and the sentry that stands guard over my mouth is really alert.
I'm not willing to put every single penny that I make into a house.
He went on to tell me that he knew that the house we really wanted was the one we were standing in. We didn't argue with him because at the same time that he was projecting, he was also giving us the information that we had not been able to get from anyone else. It was hard enough finding a person that we could talk to face to face and so we let him go on about what he thought we wanted.
The house we were in was too big for a family of three. I'd have to hire a maid to go around and dust everywhere that we didn't use.
On the other hand, the houses that we went to see were too small. Not just like, "Oh, I think I would like something bigger," too small. I'm talking about one that we walked in the master bedroom and there wasn't enough room for our bed. That's not quite true. We would be able to fit the bed in but that's all. It would quite literally be a bed room. We would have to put our dresser in another room.
We went in one that a different realtor was telling us how big the master bedroom was. Unfortunately for him and me, I compare everything to my last house. You could fit the bedroom, walk-in closet, and bathroom of this house into just the bedroom area of my last house. Nevermind the walk-in closet and huge bathroom. I need to get that image out of my head. That house in this area would be about $400,000. We paid $185,000. Crazy.
We might just have to go up in what we are willing to spend.
We are going to go in next Tuesday and meet with a realtor to look at existing homes. We better pick something we like because the next time we go looking, a 2,000 sq ft house might be a million dollar house.
You have to wonder how high prices can go before people consider them to be too high.